Monday, January 07, 2008

The Way I See It

Looking at tonight's BCS game from a purely political perspective, we've got a dumb ass southern state that voted to re-elect Bush in 2004 against a spineless Yankee state that allowed the Republicans to steal the 2004 election. You can educate the ignorant, but you can't put a backbone in a jellyfish. GEAUX TIGERS.

Update: 38-24, see what LSU can do when it gets to play a big game without an SEC officiating crew.

Hypothetical question, if the game had been close enough for AP voters to vote another team, no. 1, why not Georgia? Please try to come up with a reason that sounds like you're not trying to explain the need to repair a wall. When chosing between one-loss or two-loss teams, what difference does failure to win one own's conference, or own division within a conference, make? What does losing out in a tie-breaker formula have to do with anything? That argument really means that, under certain circumstances, an in-conference loss is worse than an out of conference loss. Why?

Well, it's purely hypothetical, and I don't care that much about what team is no. 2, but I think that are other teams as deserving as either Georgia or USC. For the best anti-USC argument, for an extremely compelling anti-USC argument, see the penultimate question here. It does bring up the question of how having the no. 1 and No. 2 teams in the final poll play each other could solve anything.

FWIW, I think that, when penalizing for losses, blowouts should hurt more than close losses, with overtime losses hurting the least. Home losses should also hurt more than away losses, and late season losses should hurt more than early season losses. I would throw in something for blown calls, but that's too subjective and some blown calls appear more dramatic on TV than others. For example, one of the many blown calls of the Pittsburgh-Seattle was a holding call that couldn't be found on any replay, but that doesn't make for dramatic television. Yeah, something similar happened to LSU against Arkansas. At any rate, blown calls would definitely not top my list of my criteria to use when chosing between one-loss teams, or two-loss teams, but I would consider them.

Comments:
heh, did you see all those purple-and-gold "bush/cheney 04" stickers when the disrespectful piece of crap who lives in the white house came to the house that Pete built? I'm not sure those folks can be educated...ever...
 
Probably not, that was the closest thng to an original angle that i could think of.
 
Why would late losses be more damning than early losses? Unless the goal is simply to pick whichever team happens to be playing the best at the end of the season, rather than to pick whichever team had the best season. Which certainly seems like the argument put forth by the Georgia and USC backers..."Ignore the early part of the season--just look at what we've done lately."
 
Hey Bayou, can u do me a favor? Go ask one of dem Nazis over at da Katrinacrat why the keep taking my comments down?

I think it may be ElWaddo cause I know Donnie ain't got da balls and Dizzy is hot for me.

Pleeeeeeeeeease
 
OH yeah, and happy freakin' New Year!
 
I'll see what I can do D-BB, but don't get your hopes up. Likewise, Happy New Year. Are you really the "evil centrist", like some people have speculated? I don't remember him being the jocular sort.

You're probably right Puddinhead, at least when it comes to the one and two loss teams at the top. They're certain things that pollsters should be able to take into account that the computer rankings can't that I think would generally point to the early loss teams being better, but when it comes to picking the top five or ten, a pollster should have the time to look at each case individually. Every year there are some teams that would be tough to play early, but fade either due to injury or because some weakness is exposed; I'm not talking about teams that seem to start strong because of a soft early schedule, but about teams that actually start strong. Then again, there are also teams that start weak, but then gel or go through a slump, but then get some injured players healthy. A human pollster can certainly take the time to see a how a team's opponents were playing -- at the time they played.

Like I said, I really hate the "can't win your own conference" disqualification -- in part because it can actually make a loss to weak teams hurt you less than a loss to a strong team, in part because it makes in-conference hurt you more than out-of-conference losses (and I don't know why that should be the case), but mainly because I've never been able to get anybody to articulate a half-way thought out reason for holding that position..

Oh, I left out the one i really hate -- no. 1 shouldn't lose its no. 1 ranking unless it loses a game. Even assuming the early polls are unbiased and accurate, it would still give more weight to early season big wins than late season big wins. Funny, it seems like it the same people who insist on the one (if you can't win your own conference...) that insist on the other (no. 1 should stay no. 1...); I've never heard a single one explain his rationale.
 
You said: Are you really the "evil centrist", like some people have speculated? I don't remember him being the jocular sort.

Heyyyyyy puss face, how dare you call me a "centrist". As for that jocular stuff, yeah, I played a little bit of High School football until that untrue allegation from the cheerleaders.
 
A tale of two SEC teams...

Losses are a wash for both teams

Georgia 10 wins
LSU 11 wins, Conference title
 
I wasn't arguing Georgia's case against LSU, just arguing against the reflexive, "if you can't win your own conference..." argument that usually penalizes teams more for a loss to a good team than a loss to a bad team.
 
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